Despite his precocity, Christian had some extraordinary crazes and superstitions. One of them he cherished from the nursery. His Norwegian nurse had told him many legends of Scandinavian Vikings whose physical perfections rivalled the gods, mighty warriors who were invulnerable in battle, like the legendary heroes of ancient wars. At this time there was a very widespread belief in northern Europe in a foolish superstition called the "Art of Passau," a secret charm which made men hard and invulnerable in battle. The young Crown Prince's imagination was fired by it, and he determined to acquire the secret of the charm and so attain his ideal of supreme physical perfection. Gradually he came to believe that he had found it, and soon the hallucination extended to his thinking that he was also endowed with superhuman mental attributes, and he saw himself a mightier ruler and warrior than Peter the Great or Frederick the Great, and a greater philosopher than Leibniz or Voltaire. The fulsome despatches of Cosby, the assistant English envoy,[30] would almost seem to warrant this preposterous belief, for he describes the Crown Prince in the most extravagant terms. [30] In 1763 the envoy, Titley, on the ground of age and infirmity, was granted an assistant, and the British Government sent Cosby to Copenhagen, and he virtually took over the whole business of the legation, Titley only intervening in domestic matters connected with the royal families of England and Denmark. Cosby conducted the diplomatic business until his recall in 1765. He suddenly went insane. [Illustration: QUEEN LOUISE, CONSORT OF FREDERICK V. OF DENMARK AND DAUGHTER OF GEORGE II. OF ENGLAND. _From a Painting by Pilo in the Frederiksborg Palace._] "I had yesterday," he writes, "the honour of an audience with the Prince Royal, and was greatly charmed with the graceful and affectionate manner in which his Royal Highness received and answered the compliment I had the honour to make him on the part of the King [George III.].[31] This young Prince already promises everything that the most sanguine hopes of this nation can expect. To an amiable and manly countenance, a graceful and distinguishing figure, he joins an address full of dignity, and at the same time extremely affable. But what struck me most was the great resemblance of his Royal Highness, both in person and manner, to the King [George III.] when his Majesty was of the age the Prince now is [sixteen]. The likeness is in truth so striking that it seems rather that of a royal brother than of a Prince more distantly related [a first cousin] to his Majesty."[32] [31] Wherever square brackets occur the matter is interpolated. [32] Cosby's despatch, Copenhagen, March 27, 1764.